In the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) series of technical standards, automatic neighbor relation (ANR) is a central piece of the self-organizing network (SON) framework. ANR allows access nodes to detect neighbor cells, establish inter-communications controller interfaces dynamically, and assist in the maintenance of their own neighbor lists. The detection of a neighbor cell can be achieved by direct reception (e.g., small cells typically have a cellular receiver that can detect a covering macro cell) or assisted by user equipments (UEs) with visibility of the neighbor.